Russia’s Ukraine incursion has woken up Europe to the fact
that it’s heavily reliant on natural gas from Vladimir Putin,
which he can threaten to shut off in order to get his way.

This realization has sparked calls for Europe to scale back its
green agenda and “drill, baby, drill.”

European Parliament passed an energy bill that would create more
burdensome regulations for oil and gas exploration, but exempted
exploration in shale formations — which the U.S. have tapped into
using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. EU lawmakers are also
pushing back finalizing their goals to reduce global warming and
increase green energy production in the face of Ukraine’s
political crisis.

Poland, which gets most of its gas from Russia, recently promised
tax-free status to companies that extract natural gas from shale
formations through 2020. Poland’s shale gas potential is
estimated between 800 to 2,000 billion cubic meters.

EU and Polish momentum have been bolstered by calls from major
European industries that want to see more oil and gas exploration
on the continent to bring down energy bills. Green policies in
countries like Germany, Spain and Britain have hit families and
businesses with high energy bills — fracking EU shale gas could
bring prices down in the years to come.

“We think that we have to balance climate policy, but also cost
competitiveness and security of supply,” Markus Beyrer, the
secretary general of BusinessEurope, told EurActiv. “And of
course, recently, the issue of security of supply has been added
an extra element of external dependence.”

“Of course energy efficiency and renewables will play a role in
this,” Beyrer added. “But talking about the quantities, this will
not be enough, so this means we will have to have a more
rational, less emotional debate on other possibilities, starting
with indigenous resources, including shale gas.”

Environmentalists have so far been successful in stymieing
fracking, getting France to ban the drilling technique and
sparking anti-fracking protests across Britain and other parts of
Europe. Activists argue that tapping into shale would have little
impact on Europe’s energy security from Russia.

“It seems like BusinessEurope is the only one to find this
problem minor,” Antoine Simon, an activist with Friends of the
Earth, told EurActiv. “Even the European Commission published a
report last year on the environmental impact assessing the
underground and surface contamination risks at its highest level
of dangerousness.”

But European fracking coupled with liquefied natural gas and oil
imports from the U.S. could have a major impact on Russia’s
energy hold in the long-run. That’s the argument U.S. lawmakers
are now making to push for more energy exports.

“This domestic energy reality allows us to engage the world in a
strong way, and to pursue our national security and foreign
policy objectives by economic means,” Alaska Republican
Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in a statement. “Lifting the
oil export ban will send a powerful message that America has the
resources and the resolve to be the preeminent power in the
world.”

Murkowski and other members of Congress have been pushing Obama
to lift the federal ban on crude oil exports and move more
quickly to approve liquefied natural gas export terminals.

“Natural gas has created a job boom across this country, but
exporting also has the potential to strengthen relationships with
certain of our allies who are still at the mercy of Russia’s
virtual energy monopoly,” said Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Europe
and Turkey got 30 percent of its natural gas from Russia, “with a
significant amount flowing through Ukraine.” Though the amount of
gas flowing through Ukraine has decreased in recent years due to
new pipeline infrastructure.

In the past, about 80 percent of Russian gas went through Ukraine
to get to European consumers, but when the Nord Stream pipeline
came online in 2011, this decreased the amount of gas passing
going through Ukraine to between 50 and 60 percent.